Page 28 - aruba-today-20190129

A28 SCIENCE
Tuesday 29 January 2019
Toshiba unveils robot to probe melted Fukushima nuclear fuel

By MARI YAMAGUCHI tional Research Institute for
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) Nuclear Decommissioning
— Toshiba Corp. unveiled found large amounts of de-
a remote-controlled ro- posits in that area, includ-
bot with tongs on Monday ing parts that resembled
that it hopes will be able to pebbles or gravel.
probe the inside of one of The 30-centimeter (12-inch)
the three damaged reac- long robot unveiled Mon-
tors at Japan's tsunami-hit day will carry a radiation
Fukushima nuclear plant dosimeter, thermometer,
and grip chunks of highly LED lights, a camera and
radioactive melted fuel. a pair of tongs as it slowly
The device is designed to slides down from a pipe.
slide down an extendable The probe, attached by a
11-meter (36-foot) long cable on its back, is to dan-
pipe and touch melted fuel gle from the pipe and de-
inside the Unit 2 reactor's scend to the bottom of the
primary containment ves- reactor vessel's pedestal, a
sel. The reactor was built by structure directly below the
Toshiba and GE. core from which the melt-
An earlier probe carrying a ed fuel fell.
camera captured images Toshiba plans to use the
of pieces of melted fuel in new device to touch and
the reactor last year, and Toshiba Corp.'s energy systems unit group manager Jun Suzuki shows a remote-controlled melted grip the deposits with the
robotic probes in the two fuel probe device at its facility in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Monday, Jan. 28, 2019. tongs, which can hold a
other reactors have de- Associated Press lump as wide as 8 centi-
tected traces of damaged meters (3 inches) weighing
fuel, but the exact location, February are key to deter- sioning process expected and tsunami damaged key up to two kilograms (4.4
contents and other details mining the proper equip- to take decades. cooling systems. pounds), to investigate its
remain largely unknown. ment and technologies The three reactors at the In last year's probe, a cam- hardness and other details,
Toshiba's energy systems needed to remove the fuel Fukushima plant suffered era developed by Toshiba said Jun Suzuki, a Toshiba
unit said experiments with debris, the most challeng- core meltdowns after a Energy Systems & Solutions ESS group manager for the
the new probe planned in ing part of the decommis- massive 2011 earthquake Corp. and the Interna- project.q

Faraway space snowman is

pitted and has bright 'collar'

By MARCIA DUNN has both light and dark lometers) beyond Ultima
AP Aerospace Writer patterns. The brightest Thule.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. spot is where the two lobes Launched in 2006, the
(AP) — The space snow- connect. Scientists say the spacecraft became the
man visited by NASA on varied shading may help first visitor to the dwarf
New Year's Day is pitted all explain how the ancient planet Pluto in 2015. Ultima
over and has a bright "col- object was formed, as the Thule was its second target.
lar" between its two fused solar system was emerging A third destination — even
spheres. 4.5 billion years ago. deeper inside the so-called
These are the newest de- Lead scientist Alan Stern Kuiper Belt on the frozen
tails to emerge about Ul- of Southwest Research In- fringes of our solar system
tima Thule, the most distant stitute promises even bet- — could be possible in the
object ever explored. ter pictures during the next 2020s.q
A close-up picture taken month. It will take almost
by NASA's New Horizons two years for New Horizons
spacecraft right before to transmit all the data from
This Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019 image made available by NASA on closest approach on Jan. the flyby, 4 billion miles (6.4
Thursday, Jan. 24 shows the Kuiper belt object Ultima Thule,
about 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, encountered by the New 1, and released Thursday, billion kilometers) away.
Horizons spacecraft. shows lots of little pits on Ul- At such a vast distance, it
Associated Press tima Thule. They're less than takes more than six hours
a half-mile (0.7 kilometers) for radio signals to travel
across. There's also a much one way. New Horizons is
bigger, circular depres- already more than 19 mil-
sion on the smaller lobe, lion miles (30.5 million ki-
considered the snowman's
head. Scientists don't know
if these are impact craters
or sinkholes.
Categorized as a contact
binary, the approximately
20-mile-long (32-kilometer-
long), reddish Ultima Thule